Short-Term Health Users Say the Coverage Worked: EHealth
A web broker shares a slice of its customer survey data.
Many people who use their short-term health insurance to pay for care seem to be happy with their coverage.
Analysts at eHealth Inc., a web broker, reported data supporting that conclusion recently in a new survey summary.
The company polled eHealth short-term health insurance customers. About 800 short-term health insurance users replied.
(Related: HealthCare.gov Plans Reject 19% of In-Network Claims: Kaiser)
One question about the short-term health insurance market is how well the issuers pay claims. Some state insurance regulators have reported seeing problems with short-term health insurers’ claim-processing operations.
About 23% of the eHealth survey participants said they had used their short-term health coverage to pay for care.
Here’s how satisfaction levels broke down for the participants who used their coverage to pay for care:
- 43% said they were very satisfied.
- 43% said they were somewhat satisfied.
- 12% said they were somewhat dissatisfied.
- 2% said they were very dissatisfied.
About 79% of the survey participants who used their coverage to pay for care said their policies covered what they thought the policies would cover.
One factor that could make interpreting those results tricky is that the views of the people who participated in the survey may not necessarily reflect the views of all short-term health insurance users. It’s possible that consumers who get short-term coverage through eHealth buy different policies than other short-term health insurance users buy, receive different product information, or have different strategies for resolving coverage concerns.
Another challenge is finding directly comparable satisfaction data for people who have actually used other types of coverage to pay for care.
In 2018, America’s Health Insurance Plans published a survey report showing that about 71% of survey participants with employer-sponsored health coverage reported being satisfied with their coverage, and 9% having neither a favorable nor an unfavorable view. AHIP did not break out separate results for survey participants who had or had not used their coverage to pay for care.
Resources
A link to the full short-term health insurance customer survey report is available here.
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